Dendritic cells are antigen presenting cells that process antigens and present them on their surfaces for recognition by T cells, which then develop an active immune response. Dendritic cells are useful in therapeutic vaccines and in vitro methods for stimulating the immune system to attack pathogens and cancer cells, as well as to characterize immune responses, such as by assessing the activation state of CD4 cells in vaccination and infection.
Most dendritic cells are found in body tissues, with only a small number found in the circulation. Therefore, there is a need to generate patient-specific dendritic cells (DC), such as by the in vitro differentiation of CD14+ circulating monocytes (MC), which are a subset of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). A common method of obtaining DC is via conversion of CD14+MC to DC by a series of incubations with of cytokines carried out with manual intervention in multiple steps over a period of 5-10 days. There is a need for automated and scalable methods for generating DC from MC and for devices and systems to carry out such methods.